Passages for Meditation

These inspired texts from world scripture and the writings of great saints and sages have been selected for reading, study, and use in passage meditation.
They come from Easwaran’s collections of inspirational passages, Timeless Wisdom and God Makes The Rivers To Flow.
Click on a passage title in the right-hand column below to read and print that passage. If an audio icon is displayed next to the passage title,
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Saint Francis

ThePrayerOfSaintFrancis109

The Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

Attributed to Francis Bernadone, perhaps the most universally loved of Christian saints, who was born in Assisi, Italy, in 1181 or 1182. At the age of twenty-two, after a sudden illness that brought him almost to the point of death, he left his home and inheritance to follow an injunction that he felt he received from Christ himself: "Francis, go and rebuild my Church." Three great Franciscan orders quickly grew around the monks, nuns, and lay disciples who responded to his joyful example of universal love and selfless service.